How to Protect Patient Privacy at an Affordable Price

by Kristen White Blogger Outside of the emergency room, medical facilities do not have the financial or logistical ability to stay open 24 hours a day to see and take care of patients. Instead, they have regular business hours and schedule appointments with individuals to come in and see their personal doctor but life doesn’t just happen within that specific timeframe. Unexpected questions and urgent situations can happen after the doors are closed but patients still need to have a way of contacting their physician to get the advice they need.

As part of the answering service’s process, the patient is asked to leave personal details including date of birth, name and even the prescriptions or conditions they are calling about. It is important that the patient trusts their doctor and believes that the HIPAA compliant answering services will protect their information and transmit it securely. Urgent calls trigger an immediate call or notification to the doctor based on the on-call schedule provided to the service and their desired notification preferences. The patient’s message is delivered straight to the physician so they have all the details directly from the individual and know how to answer the questions for the unique situation. Once the call has been dealt with, the message should either be destroyed, archived or protected for future reference with no chance of leaking personal data to anyone else.

One of the first things the medical facility has to consider is how much do answering services charge because even doctors have a fixed budget. When searching for a quality message service, it is critical not to sacrifice compliance for a cheap price but there are options where you can have both for an affordable flat rate each month. HIPAA compliance does not just deal with the physical or electronic patient files that hold the personal and health information but it also applies to any service the doctor uses connected to the office.  Patients need to trust that the message they are leaving on the service will be delivered to the right people in a timely manner and will not be sold or accidentally leaked to any other business. Check customer reviews and try out a demo of the service before committing to it so you can see for yourself how it works with your current office workflow and how they satisfy the promises they make about security and privacy protection.

The best way to earn a patient’s trust is to start with a friendly customer service representative at the front desk, good bedside manner in the exam room and support services that work with the patient to answer their questions, provide help when it is needed most and an overall protection of their personal health and condition. Avoid fines and unnecessary legal trouble by partnering with the best HIPAA compliant answering service in the market while still paying a flat affordable rate that works with the budget of even small medical offices. Your patient’s information is important and should be protected at every point in the process from an after-hours phone call to the onsite visit where their chart is on the computer for updates.

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Created on Apr 22nd 2020 03:24. Viewed 386 times.

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